Clean Coal

wsherrick wrote:Richard has shown this individual much more patience and respect than it is possible for me to muster up.

I prefer to educate instead of instigate. Most of the time when this is being discussed they don't run into many that know the topic well and the many issues. They can easily control the discussion. hence the reason my points were overlooked and he went for the low hanging fruit, no offense to any of the members here. It's important to educate yourself and when I say that don't listen to what you're being fed from the media no matter the source. if you're using Limbaugh's talking points you're only making yourself as big a fool as him.

Richard S. wrote:

wsherrick wrote:Richard has shown this individual much more patience and respect than it is possible for me to muster up.

I prefer to educate instead of instigate. Most of the time when this is being discussed they don't run into many that know the topic well and the many issues. They can easily control the discussion. hence the reason my points were overlooked and he went for the low hanging fruit, no offense to any of the members here. It's important to educate yourself and when I say that don't listen to what you're being fed from the media no matter the source. if you're using Limbaugh's talking points you're only making yourself as big a fool as him.

I agree with you 100 percent. The, "Global Warming," issue has been of great interest to me since they cooked it up in the late 1980's. To actually refute them you must know your stuff. If your audience is governed by the use of reason then they will indeed be educated.
My problem is with the vast group who don't want to be educated or rational, they can not be redeemed. This is because they don't want to be and all you get in return is frustration and bewilderment at blind group think and entire belief systems motivated by pure hatred. The Climate Issue is just one pair of dirty socks in a complete suitcase which comprises a World View that is nothing but Collectivism in all of its rotten aspects. I was refering to this group of people. I have no patience with them. I guess it is a sign that I'm getting older.

Even though this is about mining and use of coal, and not about the Climate. It all is coming from the same camp.

Pacowy, don't know for sure but I think if you look at the # of jobs between MTR & conventional mining there are no where near as many for MTR & they say MTR won't last that long 17 years is the # I heard. I did look at the Gov.wage site for steel manufacturing(my background) & found the scale pretty much on except that many of the jobs listed have been combined with other & no longer in exist, multi tasking without any or very little pay increase,that's most likely happening everywhere. The main problem I see is the destroying of the property & watersheds, without clean water there is nothing. They are giving up a lot for short term profits & getting long term problems, what kind of business would ever move into an area that has no potable water source?

I'd like to see this study. Can you find the reference?

Meanwhile, what is the point here: that coal-burning power plants are the largest point source of hydrochloric acid in US air, or that acid gas is good for you?

From what I've read, kids living in the country are often healthier than those in the city, and less likely to have asthma, various allergies, etc. The Amish live primarily in rural Pennsylvania, where the air is mighty good.

It is hard for me to imagine that acid gases are good for us.

It appeared on ABC News entitled "Amish Have Fewer Allergies Due to ‘Farm Effect’ on May 7, 2012. The original source was the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Consider this: Green Energy can be a pollutant as well. My wife has a well documented medical "allergy" to electrical energy. She, like hundreds more like her, had life saving brain surgery in the pre 2000's whereby unremovable metal sutures were used to sew her skull back together. Unknown to surgeons at the time was that patients developed a migraine syndrome triggered via the physics principle of mutual induction. Digital electronics, windmills, smart meters to name a few, are literally giving her a "headache". So what do we do, ban all modern electronics because of this hazzard? Do you really think China or India will stop using any energy resource because we think they should?

The scars & cost of clean-up by taxpayers isn't limited to coal or the Appalachians, here's an interesting read for anyone that cares to find some truth about how long some things have been going on & seem to never be allowed to change.
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/T ... php#page-1

samhill wrote:The scars & cost of clean-up by taxpayers isn't limited to coal or the Appalachians,

Sam where coal mining is concerned they have to reclaim the land they disturb, it's the law. There is a lot of debate about how well they are doing it but the mine operation pays those costs. As I already pointed out they also pay an additional tax to reclaim other abandoned properties.

I know what the law is as far as the strip mines go Richard but when I flew over some of those mines only one of which was active there was very little if any reclamation. How can you destroy a forest that was essentially holding a mountain together, bulldoze the mountain into a valley throw down a bit of rye grass & call it done? Man can't do what Mother Nature took millions of years to create is simply what I'm trying to point out. As a Pa. resident you probably know our Gov. is now trying to sell off our State Parks so something similar could be coming to land near you, right next door in my case.

samhill wrote:How can you destroy a forest that was essentially holding a mountain together, bulldoze the mountain into a valley throw down a bit of rye grass & call it done?

Sam it's long process but it comes back. For example this picture was taken early 1990's. This is in Wanamie and it's at the top of what would have been a shear cliff, it's after they backfilled the stripping hole and graded. The grass isn't even growing yet.



This is what it looked like 10 years ago:


By this point in time the tree growth will be substantially more. 50 years from now you won't even be able to tell it was there.

As a Pa. resident you probably know our Gov. is now trying to sell off our State Parks so something similar could be coming to land near you, right next door in my case.

Privatizing doesn't imply for commercial use. I'd only support it with some very strict guidelines in how they will be used.

Richard, I know your in a coal mining area just as I was & coal provided many a living but some things IMO just aren't right. I was a steelworker & feel the same way about them, in fact I was in the process of being fired & blackballed at one time for exposing a few things. It wasn't the union that saved my job it was my own friend that just happened to be a up & coming lawyer at the time, I could never have afforded to fight USS. As it stands now it won't take long relatively speaking until the coal is gone as far as MTR is concerned & much of it is exported without even being taxed then the people left that get very little if anything in return are going to be left without even the ability to live as they like. Anyhow I'm done with this before it gets out of hand.

Richard S. wrote:

DavidStang wrote: And coal mining companies -- and others in the mining industry -- could spend just a teeny bit more restoring the land when they are done, and building economic health in the communities they leave behind. It wouldn't cost as much to do this as it costs to not do it.

They already do, in addition to money they have to set aside for reclamation there is a tax on every ton of coal a mining operation extracts. Those funds are used to reclaim abandoned mines across the nation, it's quite unique to the coal mining industry. I'm not aware of any other industry that has the responsibility of fixing problems they are not directly responsible for.

I didn't say "spend a teeny bit." I said spend a "teeny bit more" If our profit margins are so slim that we can't afford to do better, then we need to pass the costs on to the consumer.

And are you saying that the mining industry is not responsible for abandoned mines? Who abandoned them?

Richard S. wrote:

DavidStang wrote: And coal mining companies -- and others in the mining industry -- could spend just a teeny bit more restoring the land when they are done, and building economic health in the communities they leave behind. It wouldn't cost as much to do this as it costs to not do it.

They already do, in addition to money they have to set aside for reclamation there is a tax on every ton of coal a mining operation extracts. Those funds are used to reclaim abandoned mines across the nation, it's quite unique to the coal mining industry. I'm not aware of any other industry that has the responsibility of fixing problems they are not directly responsible for.

I didn't say "spend a teeny bit." I said spend a "teeny bit more" If our profit margins are so slim that we can't afford to do better, then we need to pass the costs on to the consumer.

And are you saying that the mining industry is not responsible for abandoned mines? Who abandoned them?

wsherrick wrote:Richard has shown this individual much more patience and respect than it is possible for me to muster up. They have an anti capitalistic, left wing collectivist adjenda. You don't have to dig very deep to strike their true motivations. Anybody that states that there is a scientific consensus that Humans are warming the Earth is nothing more than a Crack Pot to me. They are not responsive to facts, evidence or reason. They simply need to be utterly discredited and defeated intellectually and at the Ballet Box.

Sorry, but I happen to be a capitalist. I'm not left wing. I don't know what a "collectivist adjenda" is.

It is easy to understand that humans are adding heat to the earth. We burn coal, oil, natural gas, and the combustion creates heat. Hard to build a cold fire. And we can show how greenhouse gases like CO2 and methane insulate. Drive from city to country, and watch the temperature drop: our cities are warmer than the countryside. Even capitalists should be smart enough to see this.

But intelligence doesn't aid our intuition about what the climate is doing, or why it is doing it. Take any time scale, and we will find change. Choose one scale, and we'll see the earth cooling; choose another, and we'll see it warming. The time scale of our own memory doesn't get us very far -- even though we haven't had cold winters where I live in quite a while, that doesn't prove anything. That's where we need science, and good records.

The records are now pretty clear, the science better than ever. The earth's temperature does fluctuate up and down. It was much warmer, with more atmospheric CO2, when coal was being formed. The poles were warm enough for plants to grow. It was much colder during the last ice age. The past two thousand years have been somewhat anomalous -- warmer than the planet normally is -- and we were on the way to cooling when the industrial revolution came along. Right now, all the records point to warming. See Wikipedia for samples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years

But your main point is that scientists don't agree that humans are causing the warming. You are wrong. Anyone who agrees with you on this is wrong. The headline findings of the fourth IPCC assessment were: "warming of the climate system is unequivocal", and "most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report and read the entire page. Wikipedia is written by everyone, not just anti-capitalists.

While it is easy to see that you are wrong, it is not so easy to see why you would have such an opinion. What is the benefit in believing that humans have had nothing to do with what is happening on this planet? I'm curious.